Abstract
Few institutions lend themselves as well as the church to examination for a millennium. Religious institutions and traditions change more slowly than their secular counterparts. For example, it was only in the twentieth century that the Orthodox in the Ukraine first replaced Church Slavonic with Ukrainian in the liturgy and that Uniates (Greek or Ukrainian Catholics) introduced mandatory celibacy in some dioceses. The conservatism of the churches makes it possible to speak of millennial aspects of Ukrainian Christianity. Nevertheless, modification and change have indeed occurred at various rates in different times. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, Cossack revolts and Polish, Muscovite and Ottoman intervention, the introduction of printing, and the formation of an Eastern Christian higher educational institution in Kiev—were a period of especially rapid change. The great Orthodox scholar, Georges Florovsky, labelled this age The Encounter with the West’, and viewed it as an unstable and dangerous time, which bore only sterile progeny.1 Other scholars have seen it as a period of great accomplishments that arose from challenges to the Ukrainian religious genius.2
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Notes
The standard positive evaluation of this period is I. Vlasovs’kyi, Narys istoriï Ukraïns’koi pravoslavnoi tserkvy, 4 vols in 5 books (New York: 1955–66).
The first two volumes, which cover the church’s history until the end of the seventeenth century, have appeared in an abridged English translation, I. Wlasowsky, Outline History of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, 2 vols) (New York-South Bound Brook, NJ: 1974–79).
The best general treatment of the cultural achievements of this period is M. Hrushevs’kyi, Kul’turno-natsional’nyi rukh na Ukraïni XVI–XVII st., 2nd ed., n.p. (1919).
For interpretations of Ukrainian religious traditions, see D. Doroshenko, Pravoslavna tserkva v mynulomu i suchasnomu zhytti ukraïns’koho narodu (Berlin: 1940);
N. Polons’ka-Vasylenko, Istorychni pidvalyny UAPTs (Rome: 1964);
V. Lypyns’kyi, Religiia i tserkva v istorii Ukraïni (Philadelphia: 1925);
The most recent study on Protestants in the Ukraine in this period is G. Williams, ‘Protestants in the Ukraine in the Period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’ (Harvard Ukrainian Studies, ii, 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: March 1978) pp. 41–72; ii, 2 (June 1978) pp. 184–210).
Also see M. Hrushevs’kyi, Zistoriï religiinoï dumky na Ukraïni (Lviv: 1925).
On the Union of Brest, see the standard work by E. Likowski, Unia Brzeska (1596) (Poznan: 1896), available in German and Ukrainian translations.
J. Macha, Ecclesiastical Unification: A Theoretical Framework together with Case Studies from the History of Latin-Byzantine Relations, Orientalia Christiana Annalecta, cxcviii (Rome: 1974), is an excellent discussion of church life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A. Velykyi, Z litopysu Khrystyians’koï Ukraïny, vols 4–6 (Rome: 1971–73);
M. Harasiewicz, Annales Ecclesiae Ruthenae (Lviv: 1862);
H. Luzhnyts’kyi, Ukraïns’ka tserkva mizh Skhodem i Zakhodem. Narys istoriï Ukraïns’koï tserkvy (Philadelphia: 1954),
Important works in East Slavic church history are A. Ammann, Abriss der Ostslavischen Kirchengeschichte (Vienna: 1950)
A. Kartashev, Ocherki po istorii Russkoi tserkvi, 2 vols (Paris: 1959);
Makarii (Bulgakov), Istoriia Russkoi tserkvi, 12 vols (St Petersburg: 1864–86).
J. Meyendorff, Byzantium and the Rise of Russia: A Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: 1981) examines ecclesiastical affairs.
K. Chodynicki, Kościół Prawosławny a Rzeczypospolita Polska 1370–1632 (Warsaw: 1934) deals with church-state relations.
Thanks to S. Golubev, Kievskii Mitropolit Petr Mogila i ego spodvizhniki (Opyt tserkovno-istoricheskogo issledovaniia), 2 vols (Kiev: 1883–98) this is one of the best studied periods in Ukrainian church history.
see J. Dzięgielewski, Polityka wyznaniowa Władysława IV (Warsaw: 1985).
For Orthodox church history in the late seventeenth century, see N. Carynnyk-Sinclair, Die Unterstellung der Kiever Metropolie unter das Moskauer Patriarchat (Munich: 1970).
On toleration in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, see J. Tazbir, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Tolerance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Warsaw: 1973).
On the convergence of cultural traditions, see E. Winter, Byzanz und Rom im Kampfe um die Ukraine: 955–1939 (Leipzig: 1942).
This question has been little explored recently, and K. Kharlampovich, Malorossiiskoe vliianie na velikorusskuiu tserkovnuiu zhizn’ (Kazan’: 1914) remains the basic study in the field.
On the brotherhoods, see Ia. Isaievych, Bratstva ta ïkh rol’ v rozvytku ukraïns’koï kul’tury XVI–XVII st. (Kiev: 1966).
For an argument that the role of the laity in this period was a complete innovation resisted by the clergy, see V. Zaikin, Uchastie svetskogo elementa v tserkovnom upravlenii, vybornoe nachalo i sobornost’ v Kievskoi mitropolii v XVI–XVII v. (Warsaw: 1930).
On national consciousness in this period, see T. Chynczewska-Hennel, Świadomość narodowa kozaczyzny i szlachty ukraińskiej w XVII wieku (Warsaw: 1985).
For Smotryts’kyi’s works as well as an introduction and bibliography by D. Frick, see The Works of Meletij Smotryc’kyi, Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature: Texts i (Cambridge, Mass.: 1987).
On Kysil, see F. Sysyn, Between Poland and the Ukraine: The Dilemma of Adam Kysil 1600–1653 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1985).
The relations of the Orthodox and Uniate churches and the political entities that controlled the Ukraine remain poorly studied. M. Chubatyi, ‘Pro pravne stanovyshche terkvy v kozats’kyi derzhavi’, in Bohosloviia, III (Lviv: 1925) pp. 156–87 remains the only general study on the Hetmanate.
The issue of national style has been best studied in art and architecture. See P. Bilets’kyi, Ukraïns’kyi portretnyi zhyvopys XVII–XVIII St.: Problemy stanovlennia i rozvytku (Kiev: 1969).
For a discussion of Sofonovych’s work as well as cultural processes in early modern Ukraine, see F. Sysyn, ‘The Cultural, Social and Political Context of Ukrainian History-Writing in the Seventeenth Century’, in G. Brogi Bercoff (ed.), Dall’Opus Oratorium alla Ricerca Documentaria: La Storiografia polacca, ucraina e russa fra il XVI e il XVIII secolo, Europa Orientalis, v (Rome: 1986) pp. 285–310.
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Sysyn, F.E. (1991). The Formation of Modern Ukrainian Religious Culture: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. In: Hosking, G.A. (eds) Church, Nation and State in Russia and Ukraine. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21566-9_1
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